------------------------- P A R T T H R E E -----------------------------

DOES IT? DOESN'T IT? IS IT TRUE THAT?

1) Doesn't marijuana stay in your fat cells and keep you high for months?

No. The part of marijuana that gets you high is called
`Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol.' Most people just call this THC, but this is confusing: your body will change Delta-9-THC into more inert molecules known as `metabolites,' which don't get you high. Unfortunately,these chemicals also have the word `tetrahydrocannabinol' in> them and they are also called THC -- so many people think that the metabolites get you high. Anti-drug pamphlets say that THC gets stored in your fat cells and then leaks out later like one of those `time release capsules' advertised on television. They say it can keep you high all day or even longer. This is not true, marijuana only keeps you high for a few hours, and it is not right to think that a person who fails a drug test is always high on drugs, either.

Two of these metabolites are called `11-hydroxy-tetrahydrocannabinol' and `11-nor-9-carboxy-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol' but we will call them 11-OH-THC and 11-nor instead. These are the chemicals which stay in your fatty cells. There is almost no Delta-9-THC left over a few hours after smoking marijuana, and scientific studies which measure the effects of marijuana agree with this fact.

2) But ... isn't today's marijuana much more potent than it was in the Sixties? (Or, more often ... Marijuana is 10 times more powerful than it was in the Sixties!)

GOOD! Actually, this is not true, but if it were, it would mean that marijuana is safer to smoke today than it was in the Sixties. (More potent cannabis means less smoking means less lung damage.) People who use this statistic just plain do not know what they are talking about. Sometimes they will even claim that marijuana is now twenty to thirty times stronger, which is physically impossible because it would have to be *over* 100% Delta-9-THC. The truth is, marijuana has not really changed potency all that much, if at all, in the last several hundred years. Growing potent cannabis is an ancient art which has not improved in centuries, despite all our modern technology. Before marijuana was even made illegal, drug
stores sold tinctures of cannabis which were over 40% THC. Even so, the point is moot because marijuana smokers engage in something called `auto-titration.' This basically means smoking until they are satisfied and then stopping, so it does not really matter if the marijuana is more potent because they will smoke less of it. Marijuana is not like pre-moistened towelettes or snow-cones. There is nothing forcing marijuana smokers to smoke an entire joint.
Experienced marijuana users are accustomed to smoking marijuana from many different suppliers, and they know that if they smoke a whole joint of very potent bud they will get `TOO STONED'. Since being `too stoned' is a rather unpleasant experience, smokers quickly learn to take their time and `test the waters' when they do not know how strong their marijuana is.

3a) Doesn't Marijuana cause brain damage?

The short answer: No.

The long answer: The reason why you ask this is because you probably heard or read somewhere that marijuana damages brain cells, or makes you stupid. These claims are untrue.

The first one -- marijuana kills brain cells -- is based on research done during the second Reefer Madness Movement. A study attempted to show that marijuana smoking damaged brain structures in monkeys. However, the study was poorly performed and it was severely criticized by a medical review board. Studies done afterwards failed to show any brain damage, in fact a very recent study on Rhesus monkeys used technology so sensitive that scientists could actually see the effect of learning on brain cells, and it found no damage.

But this was Reefer Madness II, and the prohibitionists were looking around for anything they could find to keep the marijuana legalization movement in check, so this study was widely used in anti-marijuana propaganda. It was recanted later. (To this day, the radical anti-drug groups, like D.A.R.E. & P.R.I.D.E. and Dr. Gabriel Nahas, still use it -- In fact, America's most popular drug education program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, claims that marijuana ``can impair memory perception & judgement by destroying brain cells.'' When police and teachers read this and believe it, our job gets really tough, since it takes a long time to explain to children how Ms. Jones and Officer Bob were wrong.)
The truth is, no study has ever demonstrated cellular
damage, stupidity, mental impairment, or insanity brought on specifically by marijuana use -- even heavy marijuana use.
This is not to say that it cannot be abused, however.

3b) If it doesn't kill brain cells, how does it get you `high'?

Killing brain cells is not a pre-requisite for getting `high.' Marijuana contains a chemical which substitutes for a natural brain chemical, with a few differences. This chemical touches special `buttons' on brain cells called `receptors.' Essentially, marijuana `tickles' brain cells.
The legal drug alcohol also tickles brain cells, but it will damage and kill them by producing toxins (poisons) and sometimes mini-seizures. Also, some drugs will wear out the buttons which they push, but marijuana does not.

4) Don't people die from smoking pot?

Nobody has ever overdosed. For any given substance, there are bound to be some people who have allergic reactions.
With marijuana this is extremely rare, but it could happen with anything from apples to pop-tarts. Not one death has ever been directly linked to marijuana itself.
In contrast, many legal drugs cause hundreds to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, foremost among them are alcohol,
nicotine, valium, aspirin, and caffiene.
The biggest danger with marijuana is that it is illegal, and someone may mix it with another drug like PCP.

Marijuana is so safe that it would be almost impossible to overdose on it. Doctors determine how safe a drug is by measuring how much it takes to kill a person (they call this the LD50) and comparing it to the amount of the drug which is usually taken (ED50). This makes marijuana hundreds of times safer than alcohol, tobacco, or caffiene. According to a DEA Judge ``marijuana is the safest therapeutically active substance known to mankind.''

5) I forgot, does marijuana cause short-term memory impairment?

The effect of marijuana on memory is its most dramatic and the easiest to notice. Many inexperienced marijuana users find that they have very strange, sudden and unexpected memory lapses. These usually take the form of completely forgetting what you were talking about when you were right in the middle of saying something important.
However, these symptoms only occur while a person is `high'.
They do not carry over or become permanent, and examinations of extremely heavy users has not shown any memory or thinking problems. More experienced marijuana users seem to be able to remember about as well as they do when they are not `high.'

Studies which have claimed to show short-term memory impairment have not stood up to scrutiny and have not been duplicated. Newer studies show that marijuana does not impair simple, real-world memory processes. Marijuana does slow reaction time slightly, and this effect has sometimes been misconstrued as a memory problem. To put things in perspective, one group of researchers made a control group hold their breath, like marijuana smokers do. Marijuana itself only produced about twice as many effects on test scores as breath holding. Many people use marijuana to study. Other people cannot, for some reason, use marijuana and do anything that involves deep thought. Nobody knows what makes the difference.

6a) Is marijuana going to make my boyfriend go psycho?

Marijuana does not `cause' psychosis. Psychotic people can smoke marijuana and have an episode,
but there is nothing in marijuana that actually initiates or increases these episodes.
Of course, if any mentally ill person is given marijuana for the first time or without their knowledge,
they might get scared and `freak.' Persons who suffer from severe psychological disorders often use
marijuana as a way of coping. Because of this, some researchers have assumed that marijuana is the cause of
these problems, when it is actually a symptom. If you have heard that marijuana makes people go crazy,
this is probably why.
6b) Don't users of marijuana withdraw from society?

To some extent, yes. That's probably just because they are afraid of being arrested, though. The same situation exists with socially maladjusted persons as does with the mentally ill. Emotionally troubled individuals find marijuana to be soothing, and so they tend to use it more than your average person. Treatment specialists see this, and assume that the marijuana is causing the problem. This is a mistake which hurts the patient, because their doctors will pay less attention to their actual needs, and concentrate on ending their drug habit. Sometimes the cannabis is even helping them to recover. Cannabis can be abused, and it can make these situations worse, but psychologists should approach marijuana use with an open mind or they risk hurting their patient.

Marijuana itself does not make normal people anti-social.
In fact, a large psychological study of teenagers found that casual marijuana users are more well adjusted than `drug free' people. This would be very amusing, but it is a serious problem. There are children who have emotional problems which keep them from participating in healthy,
exploratory behavior. They need psychological help but instead they are skipped over. Marijuana users who do not need help are having treatment forced on them, and in the mean-time marijuana takes the blame for the personality characteristics and problems of the people who like to use it improperly. 7) Is it true that marijuana makes you lazy and unmotivated?

Not if you are a responsible adult, it doesn't. Ask the U.S. Army. They did a study and showed no effect. If this were true, why would many Eastern cultures, and Jamaicans, use marijuana to help them work harder? `Amotivational syndrome' started as a media myth based on the racial stereotype of a lazy Mexican borracho. The prohibitionists claimed that marijuana made people worthless and sluggish. Since then, however, it has been scientifically researched,
and a symptom resembling amotivational syndrome has actually been found. However, it only occurs in adolescent teenagers -- adults are not affected.

When a person reaches adolescence, their willingness to work usually increases, but this does not happen for teenagers using marijuana regularly -- even just on the weekends. The actual studies involved monkeys, not humans, and the results are not verified, but older studies which tried to show `amotivational syndrome' usually only succeeded when they studied adolescents. Adults are not effected.

The symptoms are not permanent, and motivation returns to normal levels several months after marijuana smoking stops. However, a small number of people may be unusually sensitive to this effect. One of the monkeys in the experiment was severely anti-motivated and did not recover. Doctors will need to study this more before they know why.

8) Isn't marijuana a gateway drug?
Doesn't it lead to use of harder drugs?

This is totally untrue. In fact, researchers are looking into using marijuana to help crack addicts to quit. There are 40 million people in this country who have smoked marijuana for a period of their lives -- why aren't there tens of millions of heroin users, then? In Amsterdam, both marijuana use and heroin use went *down* after marijuana was decriminalized -- even though there was a short rise in cannabis use right after decriminalization. Unlike addictive drugs, marijuana causes almost no tolerance. Some people even report a reverse tolerance. That is, the longer they have used the less marijuana they need to get `high.'
So users of marijuana do not usually get bored and `look for something more powerful'. If anything, marijuana keeps people from doing harder drugs.

The idea that using marijuana will lead you to use heroin or speed is called the `gateway theory' or the `stepping stone hypothesis.' It has been a favorite trick of the anti-drug propaganda artists, because it casts marijuana as something insidious with hidden dangers and pitfalls. There have never been any real statistics to back this idea up, but somehow it was the single biggest thing which the newspapers
yelled about during Reefer Madness II. (Perhaps this was because the CIA was looking for someone to blame for the increase in heroin use after Viet Nam.)

The gateway theory of drug use is no longer generally accepted by the medical community. Prohibitionists used to point at numbers which showed that a large percentage of the hard drug users `started with marijuana.' They had it backwards -- many hard drug users also use marijuana. There are two reasons for this. One is that marijuana can be used
to `take the edge off' the effects of some hard drugs. The other is a recently discovered fact of adolescent psychology
-- there is a personality type which uses drugs, basically because drugs are exciting and dangerous, a thrill.
On sociological grounds, another sort of gateway theory has been argued which claims that marijuana is the source of the drug subculture and leads to other drugs through that culture. By the same token this is untrue -- marijuana does
not create the drug subculture, the drug subculture uses
marijuana. There are many marijuana users who are not a part of the subculture.

This brings up another example of how marijuana legalization could actually reduce the use of illicit drugs. Even though there is no magical `stepping stone' effect, people who
choose to buy marijuana often buy from dealers who deal in many different illegal drugs. This means that they have
access to illegal drugs, and might decide to try them out.
In this case it is the laws which lead to hard drug use. If
marijuana were legal, the drug markets would be separated,
and less people would start using the illegal drugs. Maybe
this is why emergency room admissions for hard drugs have
gone down in the states that decriminalized marijuana during
the 70's.
9a) I don't want children (minors) to be able to smoke marijuana.
How can I stop this?

Legalize it. They can smoke it now; it is about as easy to get as alcohol. There would be less marijuana being sold in schools, playgrounds, and street corners, though, if it was sold legally through pharmacies -- because the dealers would not be able to compete with the prices. If you are a parent, the choice is really up to you: Do you want your children to sneak off with their friends and use marijuana which they bought off the street, or do you want to talk to them calmly and explain to them why they should wait until they are older? Your children are not going to walk up to you and tell you that they use an illegal drug, but if it was not such a big deal they might give you a chance to explain your feelings. Besides, would you rather children use speed, cocaine, and alcohol?

Consider, also, that children have a natural urge to do things that they aren't supposed to. It is called curiosity. By making such a fuss over marijuana, you make it interesting (some call it the `forbidden fruit' factor.)
This is made worse when children are lied to about drugs by
teachers and police -- they lose respect for the school and the government. In a lot of ways, it is the hysteria about
drugs which causes the most harm. When marijuana users do
none of the horrible things they are supposed to, children
may think that other more harmful drugs are OK, too. Your children will not respect you unless you are calm and give good reasons for your rules. The first step is for you, the parent, to learn the facts about drugs.

9b) Won't children be able to steal marijuana plants that people are growing?

Well, if you are worried about them stealing the hemp plants from the paper-pulp farm down the road, you should know that the commercial grades of hemp do not contain much THC (the stuff that gets you high.) If they were to smoke it, they would probably just get a headache. Otherwise, it should be the responsibility of the grower to take measures
to prevent this. Most ``home-grown'' marijuana is cultivated indoors anyway. If the children in your town have nothing better to do than go around stealing marijuana
to smoke, your town needs to buy a library or something.

10a) Hey, don't you know that marijuana drops testosterone levels in teenage boys causing [various physical and developmental problems]?

Marijuana does not turn young healthy boys into lanky, girlish looking wimps, no. This scare tactic (call it homo-phobic if you will) was a common device used in early anti-drug literature. It attempts to scare boys away from marijuana by telling them, essentially, that it will turn
them into a girl. Young men probably should not use marijuana heavily (see the section on amotivational
syndrome), but the risks are not horrendous.

Anti-marijuana pamphlets used this claim often during Reefer Madness II, but the studies which are cited are mostly faulty or misinterpreted. This is not to say that marijuana
use does not affect childhood development at all, just that the effects are not as drastic as some people would like them to sound. In fact they are pretty much unknown.
Continued


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